Sports writing

Strachan, J (2024) 'Sports writing.' In: Morrison, R, ed. The Oxford handbook of British Romantic prose. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 755-772. ISBN 9780198834540

Abstract

This chapter looks at the print culture of sport in the Romantic era and the extraordinary effervescence of sporting prose in the period. William Hazlitt’s famous meditation on bareknuckle boxing, ‘The Fight’ (1822), an account of the championship contest between Tom ‘The Gas Man’ Hickman and Bill Neat, is one of the most significant of Romantic-period prose writings. It can also be seen as the culmination of several decades of sports writing, initiated by Peter Beckford’s Thoughts on Hunting (1781), including the four volumes of Pierce Egan’s Boxiana, or Sketches of Modern Pugilism (1812–1829), and the first modern sports biography, Charles James Apperley’s (‘Nimrod’s’) sensational, tragi-comic Memoirs of the Life of the Late John Mytton (1837). Sport became a forum in the late Georgian period to discuss matters such as masculinity, war, and education, what it meant to be British, and what it meant to be a man.

Item Type:	Book Chapter or Section
Note:	sport, masculinity, war, education, boxing, hunting, biography, the essay
Divisions:	Chancelry and Research Management
Date Deposited:	31 Jan 2024 17:11
Last Modified:	30 May 2024 18:54
URI / Page ID:	https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/id/eprint/16076

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